AuscandocOct 28, 2024
An excerpt from Untold Tales of #BritishColumbia The Victoria doctor who saved his city from Spanish flu, in Islander - Victoria Times Colonist https://www.timescolonist.com/islander/pushback-how-a-victoria-doctor-saved-his-city-from-1918-flu-despite-overwhelming-pressure-9708296 As the article says “Not much has changed, really.”
Pushback: How a Victoria doctor saved his city from 1918 flu despite overwhelming pressure

Dr. Arthur G. Price faced pressure from both the religious and business communities to reverse his ban on public gathering, but his measures resulted in Victoria having less than half the mortality rate of Vancouver

Times Colonist
Show threadAuscandocOct 28, 2024
“Dr. Arthur G. Price faced pressure from both the religious and business communities to reverse his ban on public gathering, but his measures resulted in #Victoria having less than half the mortality rate of #Vancouver”
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This part of the story of the #InfluenzaPandemic I never knew “The Canadian military historian Mark Humphries asserts that “newly unearthed records confirm that one of the side stories of the war — the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese labourers to work behind the British and French lines on World War I’s Western Front — may have been the source of the pandemic.”
Oct 28, 2024 at 6:44pmWeb
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“A little over one hundred years later, official health advisements on curbing the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) were fundamentally the same as in 1918: avoid crowds, if you feel ill, self-isolate and get immediate bedrest.

Human nature being what it is, mandatory measures soon followed — not unlike what occurred in 2020 and 2021.”

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“And so, just like today, the sheer necessity of getting people back to work, of buying and selling goods and services — in short, of maintaining a healthy economy — placed increasing pressure on medical authorities like Dr. Price to lift the restrictions placed upon Victoria’s business community and public alike.

By mid-October, discontent was already rising when Price refused the local clergy’s request to hold open-air services.”

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👉 “By month’s end, faced with overwhelming public pressure to assemble in large gatherings with the imminent end of the war, Price issued his strongest warning yet: “Wake up! Realize that there is a war on, a war in our very midst, an epidemic of influenza. Do not sneer at the enemy. Do not belittle it by calling it ‘Flu.’ Give it its full name, be serious and realize that the undertakers are busy.”

..mounting pressure from both the religious and business communities continued to increase.”